Few diagnostic categories are as controversial in psychoanalysis as hysteria. Widely held to reflect outmoded cultural prejudices against women, hysteria has virtually disappeared from our theoretical literature, diagnostic manuals, and training programs. However, far from being gender-bound, this book shows that hysteria for Jacques Lacan represents a psychic strategy that bears on one of the most fundamental preoccupations of existence: What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man?"